The electronic workplace facilitates collaboration in enterprises, both within and with the outside entities. An electronic mail system is one of the tools included in the electronic workplace. In addition to sending e-mail, there are many other features and tools that the electronic mail system provides. Out of office is an optional feature provided by many of the popular electronic mail systems, especially by POP3 (Post Office Protocol) electronic mail system. POP3 is a version of the POP standard.
In computing, the POP is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by local e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a remote server over a TCP/IP connection. POP and IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) are the two most prevalent Internet standard protocols for e-mail retrieval. Virtually all modern e-mail clients and servers support both.
When the out of office agent is enabled, it automatically responds to e-mail that arrives when the user is out of the office. While configuring the agent, the user can specify the text of the message, and set rules on who should receive the special alert messages or who should not receive the alert messages. The out of office agent also provides an option to mark the user's calendar “busy” for the time he/she is away. The agent generates automatic alert messages once for each person who sends e-mail to the user, even if the person sends several messages during the user's absence.